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Do you remember your Klout score !! Do you share your Location via Foursquare (every time you move around) !! Do you Tweet about your Breakfast, Lunch, Coffee Break, Dinner !!! Do you manage to update your Facebook Status for every other small or big News!! Are you too Busy tweeting about the awesome time that you are having instead of living in the moment and avoiding eye contact with the person you are with ?? Do you keep surfing about what’s New in Social Media in market and how to master it!! Well if you do these things be careful, you might be termed as Social Media Addict!!!

So, Do you think you are a Social Media Addict!!! Are we all getting too dependent on Social Media that we have actually almost stopped interacting or meeting human beings for real! For some of us, including me it was really difficult to disagree to the above point, but it’s a fact. Social networks have changed the ways we interact with each other enormously. We most often end up spending more time sharing at our computer screens that actually getting up and having a short chat with our colleagues, friends, professionals etc. The concept of meeting people has changed completely over the period of time.

The dependency on virtual interaction than personal one has really gone high. It’s hard to believe that kids do end up discussing their project work via Social media. Just one post on Facebook and your get an instant reply. Are we saying that this is not a good practice… Well, no one is against the use of Social Media but one had to draw a line and have discipline while using such forum.

Few checks from our daily life to tell us whether we are social media addicts:

– Once we are up, the first thing that we tend to do is Check BBM Messenger / Whats Up / Mails / Facebook Messages / Tweets and so on.

– Some of us wake up in middle of night to see if we have mentions in Twitter

– Updating every small and big event across these forums, Status messages like “Time for Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner, dating, outing and at times even crib about bad day!” is a must mention.

– You Check In via Foursquare or Places and announce your arrival/departure from various places be if office, school, home, any famous/Non famous restaurants and so on..

– Responding to all the comments, mentions on FB or Twitter within seconds, thanks to Blackberry and Android phones.

– Share random pictures, comment and like the moment pictures are clicked or shared within network!

– Search for new updates in this platform and master it in short while, like finding new tools for twitter stats , for FB and LinkedIn stats. Example being KLOUT.

– Most important, Feeling incomplete when we are out and not able to use this as if someone thing important is missing. – And then the same process will carry on till the wee hours 🙂

So in all this activities it’s really hard to find out the time you spent in interacting with real people (Outside your virtual world). As per my personal experience, Social interaction is good, it’s a platform where I have really enjoyed sharing news, blogs and personal opinion which ofcourse I might have not done when I met someone in real. I like to utilize social media to engage in social interactions, it’s just an alternative. Again the reason to write this post is not to say that using Social Media is bad, but the key is to be able to balance the use of this exciting form of interaction with all the other aspects of our lives.

Well, Check-in via foursquare has really picked up, and creating a decent space in the Social Networking World. foursquare is a location-based social networking website based on software for mobile devices. This service is available to users with GPS-enabled mobile devices, such as smartphones. Users “check-in” at venues using a mobile website, text messaging or a device-specific application by running the application and selecting from a list of venues that the application locates nearby.

In my previous posts i had mentioned about “Are you Posting Jobs on Twitter – http://mcaf.ee/49fc8 and Facebook for Recruiting – http://mcaf.ee/qp14i . Hence just wanted to try out something new with Foursquare.

As a pilot project, just tried to identify certain places where IT Professionals Check-in via Foursquare, and try to see the number of people checking into that particular area. All i did was post a Job Opening (In the Tips section). So every time and individual checks- in the location, they will get a info about Job Openings. And based on their interest, they might send across their resumes.

Following are some of the samples for your reference:

In this particular sample, Magarpatta / Magarpatta Cyber City and DLF are locations in Pune, India, where there are lot many IT organizations. Hence every time an individual checks-in, he/she will get to see a tip regarding that location. I have posted a job Requirement in the tips section. On the right hand side, you can also see the number of check-in made till date.

Although this is just a small start, as the number of users in India are not as high as other European countries, but people are picking it up quickly. As the number of users will increase, the check-ins will also increase, thus the visibility of such job openings will improve.

You might wonder how is that possible 😉 I would love to answer this question.

The answer is…….. ” Hootsuite ” Some of you might be using other apps like Tweekdeck or Seesmic etc. The following post is a small attempt to share my experience with Hootsuite. (i can use this without downloading it)

So, what’s so cool about Hootsuite…….. Well, the best part of Hootsuite is that you can have all of your social networking accounts on one single page. You can see your updates, reply, put in your status message. And……. Hold on to your breath….. You can also schedule your tweets, status messages. There you go, you can set the exact time and date when you want to have a tweet or status message sent across to world out there.

Also there is this amazing way you can filter the messages / Tweets. It is called as Stream. You can type any Keyword and create a tab. This tab will filter based on the search that you have given. And will show you tweets or messages matching that exact Keyword. For example i have created a Stream related to Social Media. SO, every time there is a tweet or message which contains SOCIAL MEDIA i will get that in my tab. Interesting right….

Here is a small example of how it looks……. (Click on this Picture twice to have a complete view)

So what are you waiting for…… Go on, try it out. Its really very useful. Looking forward to know your experience about Hootsuite. It would great to know how you use it or how has it helped you.